Mistrial came after lead prosecutor Barbara "Bobbi" Bernstein mentioned the name of a victim in a different civil rights case

A federal judge on Friday delayed the retrial of retired NOPD Sgt. Gerard Dugue until March, saying the extra time will allow prosecutors and defense attorneys to appeal certain issues. Dugue's original trial was held in January, but it ended in a mistrial while he was on the stand.

Former NOPD Sgt. Gerard DugueMatthew Hinton, Times-Picayune archive

The NOPD veteran was one of two homicide detectives who conducted the NOPD's internal probe of the Danziger Bridge shootings after Hurricane Katrina.

U.S. District Court Judge Kurt Engelhardt on Friday announced he needed to push the trial back from its Oct. 28 date so appellate courts could hear petitions from both the defense and U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors. The trial will now be held on March 11.

Dugue is accused of participating in a cover-up of the bridge shootings by helping another police detective write a fraudulent report about the incident. He was tried separately from five other NOPD officers, who were convicted in August 2011 of orchestrating a cover-up of the shooting, which left two men dead and four people seriously injured. Four of those officers were also convicted of civil rights violations for illegally shooting unarmed civilians.

The mistrial in January came after lead prosecutor Barbara "Bobbi" Bernstein mentioned the name of a victim in a different police civil rights case while questioning Dugue.

Defense attorney Claude Kelly argued that the mere mention of that man's name, Raymond Robair, could taint the jury, as the case was well-known in the New Orleans area. An NOPD officer was convicted in federal court of beating Robair, who later died. Dugue had conducted the NOPD investigation into that death and the involved officers of wrongdoing.

Kelly had argued to Engelhardt and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that the error was so significant that the government should be prohibited from proceeding with a new trial of his client. But an appellate panel and Engelhardt agreed that there was no evidence that Bernstein meant to cause a mistrial, which means a second trial is fair game.

Still, the 5th Circuit panel did chastise Bernstein, saying she displayed "overreaching and unprofessional conduct" by bringing up the Robair case in open court. Before the trial, Engelhardt had denied prosecutors' requests to bring up the case during the Danziger Bridge trial.

Federal prosecutors have asked the panel to reconsider the case to specifically remove the language finding fault with Bernstein's conduct. In a filing from August, U.S. Department of Justice attorneys argued that right before Bernstein made the comment that led to the mistrial she was trying to impeach Dugue's testimony and believed she had received the judge's permission to introduce the report.

The 5th Circuit language chastising Bernstein also doesn't take into account the fact that Engelhardt agreed that the prosecutor's error was unintentional, the federal government petition argued.

Dugue's defense attorneys have asked the panel to reject prosecutors' move to strike the language, calling that request "an act of indescribable hubris." According to Engelhardt's order, defense attorneys eventually plan to appeal the 5th Circuit decision allowing the new trial to go forward to the U.S. Supreme Court.